Travel, Tourism & Outdoor Recreation
Promoting America’s Tourist Communities

The U.S. Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) Travel, Tourism, and Outdoor Recreation program invested $750 million in American Rescue Plan funding to support communities across the country whose economies were hard hit by damage to these sectors from the COVID-19 pandemic. With funding going to every state and territory across 185 awards, EDA’s investments are rebuilding the travel and tourism sector and creating a more equitable, competitive, and resilient industry.

Learn more about the Travel, Tourism, and Outdoor Recreation grantees by exploring the American Rescue Plan Impact Map.

The Travel, Tourism, and Outdoor Recreation program is divided into two components:

• State Tourism Grants: $510 million in direct awards to help states quickly invest in marketing, infrastructure, workforce and other projects to rejuvenate safe leisure, business and international travel.
• Competitive Grants: $240 million to help communities that have been hardest hit by challenges facing the travel, tourism, and outdoor recreation sectors to invest in infrastructure, workforce, or other projects to support the recovery of the industry and economic resilience of the community in the future.

Each state or territory is utilizing its directly allocated funds to engage in activities that best support their travel, tourism, and outdoor recreation sectors. These activities include but are not limited to workforce training, new construction or upgrades to existing tourism infrastructure, tourism marketing and promotion, and tourism-related economic planning. The competitive grant program is distributed across 126 awards to support communities across the country as they rebuild and strengthen their travel, tourism, and outdoor recreation sectors. The competitive funding is expected to generate $1.1 billion in private investment and to create or save 10,291 jobs , according to grantee estimates. This program was designed to prioritize equity, and as a result, more than 50% of competitive awards are expected to directly benefit historically underserved communities and populations. In addition, $29.3 million across 12 awards is supporting coal communities and $21.2 million across 9 awards is supporting Indigenous communities.

Program Resources

• Notice of Funding Opportunity
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Travel, Tourism and Outdoor Recreation Webinar
  • Travel, Tourism and Outdoor Recreation presentation slides (PDF)
• State Tourism Grant Allocations
• One Pager (PDF)

Contacts

• Visit www.eda.gov/contact to find contact information for your Economic Development Representative